Damage from a fire Friday at Grand River Dam Authority’s Choteau power plant will take awhile to fix.
One turbine bore the brunt of the damage from the fire. Though GRDA is still assessing the situation, spokesman Justin Alberty said it could be down a year and a half to two years.
"We do know that none of our customers are going to suffer. They're not going to lose any power, and we hope to continue to maintain reliability of the system as we put all this back in place," Alberty said.
A second turbine was also damaged but should be back in service soon. GRDA has other generating facilities and regional partners that can help fill any gaps. The authority may also end up buying wind power from western Oklahoma.
Friday’s fire started after a lightning strike knocked a pump offline, causing equipment to overheat. There were no injuries in the fire, which burned for several hours, and it didn't cause any outages.